Green Party of Alberta response to Question 9

Question 1: Will you support Calgary’s 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness by providing a greater share of funding to Calgary to reflect the city’s growth, cost of living and high homeless population?

Question: 2 Will you reinstate block funding to enable The City of Calgary to sustain affordable housing development?

Question: 3 What commitment will you make to the construction of more affordable housing in cities?

Question: 4 What measures would you be willing to introduce to encourage the participation of the private sector in the development of more affordable housing in Alberta’s cities?

Answer:
The following are excerpts from the Green Party of Alberta’s Election 2015 platform which bear on the issue of homelessness, affordable and accessible housing:

Sustainable towns and cities

Alberta needs a provincial framework which sets targets to achieve greater sustainability in our cities and towns. For example, the framework could include density targets – which would speak to the possibility of such things as secondary suites – diversity of land-use targets, so we have more vibrant towns and cities, creativity targets, for example, to bring innovative housing forms such as co-housing to fruition and “sense of place”, such as walkability, goals;

Greens support empowering municipalities to require a percentage of affordable units in multiple-housing developments. This is called “inclusive zoning”;

True social justice

Greens support implementation of a Guaranteed Annual Income;
Albertans need a provincial housing authority to build and manage affordable, rental housing in the province. A chronic lack of affordable housing signals a clear market failure, thus government has to step in. A provincial program could both require the building of rental housing and provide funding to make this initiative possible;
Greens would create an Urban Lands Trust of publicly-owned lands to support the construction of affordable and sustainable housing, primarily but not only for families;

The sharing economy

Greens support policy and legislative frameworks, including tax measures, to nurture co-operatives which are the most significant alternative economy. Co-ops extend beyond housing and credit unions. For example, there is a solar energy co-op in Saskatchewan;